Material planning for various large projects in the modern manufacturing environment can be a challenging endeavor. For example, a bill of materials (BOM) for a complex piece of equipment such as an airplane or automobile may comprise an extensive lists of materials (e.g., raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, components, parts, etc.). Even for less complex manufactured goods, material planning remains a challenging endeavor. For material planning purposes, it is often desirable to place parts in a multi-level hierarchy of components and subcomponents. As will be appreciated, most manufactured goods may have hierarchies with many levels, with the number of levels increasing as the complexity of the manufactured good increases. Typically, each part in the hierarchy is assigned a code corresponding to its location in the hierarchy. If a subcomponent changes, then the parts need to be resorted into a new hierarchy and the codes are recalculated.